What is orthogonal?

Orthogonal means things that are completely independent, like two lines on a piece of graph paper that never touch.

Imagine you're playing with building blocks. You can stack them up and down, or side to side. Now imagine stacking one block straight up while another moves entirely left or right, they don’t interfere with each other at all. That’s orthogonal!

Think of a grid like the floor tiles in your room. One direction is left and right (like moving along the x-axis), and the other is forward and back (like moving along the y-axis). These directions are orthogonal because you can move in one without affecting the other.

Now imagine a ladder: you can climb up or down, but if you also turn left or right on the same ladder, that’s not orthogonal, it’s more like diagonal movement. But if you have two ladders next to each other, one going straight up, and another going straight sideways, those are orthogonal, they work together without getting in each other's way.

Orthogonal things can be used together to build something bigger, but they don’t get tangled or confused with each other. Like your blocks, neat! Orthogonal means things that are completely independent, like two lines on a piece of graph paper that never touch.

Imagine you're playing with building blocks. You can stack them up and down, or side to side. Now imagine stacking one block straight up while another moves entirely left or right, they don’t interfere with each other at all. That’s orthogonal!